Will Bunch

STAFF COLUMNIST

Will Bunch has worked at the Daily News for 20-plus years and is now senior writer. Since 2005, he’s written the uber-opinionated, fair-but-dangerously unbalanced opinion blog "Attytood," covering a range of topics (but mostly politics and the media these days); it’s been named best blog in the state by the Associated Press Managing Editors and best blog in the city by Philadelphia Magazine. He’s also authored three full-length books and three Amazon Kindle Single e-books, including 2015’s The Bern Identity: A Search for Bernie Sanders and the New American Dream. Prior to coming to Philadelphia, he worked at New York Newsday, where he was part of a team that won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting.

This summer I wrote about the Corbett administration's fox-guarding-the-henhouse plan of placing a leading advocate for charter schools in charge of drafting a blueprint to "save" public education in the beleaguered Chester-Upland school district. Interestingly, the plan announced by that pick, Joe Watkins, called for radical change and steep cuts but would have kept the district intact until 2015. Except that the, ahem, Republicans on the board rejected this plan, so now it's not clear what happens but you have to think the privatization of schools in the poverty-stricken Delco community will come sooner rather than later. If you didn't know better, you'd almost think the fix was in from Day One.

Of course, there already is the privatized operator of a large charter school in Chester -- his name is Vahan Gureghian, and he just happens to be Gov. Corbett's largest campaign donor. Since Gureghian entered the charter school business, he began building a home in Palm Beach -- rendering at top.